Okay, here we have the MTV Europe Music Awards from 2022, so the very recent edition in fact. They took place in mid-November 2022 and this was minimally over a week ago from the date of my review. It's already been a few days since I watched it, so it was not a long time after when the event happened. The somewhat special thing now is that the show took place in my country Germany, but not in my city. Instead, it was held in Dusseldorf, one of the biggest German cities and that one is rather in the west. You can also see from the title that MTV was in charge of all this and you can see from my rating that I did not like the outcome at all, but was pretty disappointed instead. I am already not big at all on the American editions of the MTV Music Awards, but this one here was another step down even on the quality ladder. Took a great deal of absence of quality and creativity for that, but they got there in the end. Or also during earlier stages of the show. The good news is that this event only ran for approximately 95 minutes or if we add commercials, then it would be roughly two hours I suppose.

You could also call this show the 2022 Taylor Swift Awards because she won basically every major category. I am not really sure who decided the winners here and frankly I don't care either, but for me it seemed as if they were so happy that she was there in person that they just let her win everything. Oh my. If she was a creative and talented artist at least, but her days of making a creative impact are almost decades ago now and nowadays she is really all about pointless and empty and pseudo-important pop music. Of course, the (lost) romance reference must always be a part of this for people to relate to her. I don't even blame her. She does what she has to do in order to make sure millions and millions of fans still keep buying her records after all these years. And she succeeds with that, so she is probably not a bad actress either. She just broke records recently with record sales and concert tickets and whatever else. Good for her. Not good for music and the industry. Then again, admittedly the other people defining the music industry now in terms of sales are not high-quality musicians either in the overwhelming majority of cases. There is great music out there, without a doubt, but you will not find it at shows like this. As I stated earlier, the artists are not really to blame, rather the ones who buy their mediocrity. The obvious result are very questionable heroes. As for Swift, they even joked on one occasion that she is winning every award. In the middle of the show. That says it all. She probably knew she would dominate here and it was all scripted.

The hosts were Rita Ora and Taika Waititi. Ora I can kinda understand. She is British and a successful musician. Waititi, on the other hand, no clue why he was there. Yes, he is an Oscar nominee, but he is neither European, nor does he have a lot to do with music. Reason is probably because of stardom and of course he is Ora's significant other. The two were incredibly bland as hosts I must say. Another disappointment. Ora changing her dress and hair every five to ten minutes won't change anything there. Really miscast as hosts. There was one moment when Waititi was just laying on a sofa in the backstage area or so and it seemed as if he would let Ora host alone now. Of course, it was just a skit, but I still liked the idea that he realized it is all bad and pointless anyway, so he would just stop. Ora then standing next to Taylor Swift and saying she will just hang out with her now brought even more cringe. There was also the general problem again that so many (music) awards shows these days have, namely that it did not feel like an awards show at all anymore. There was just too much music, too many performances on the stage and as a consequence not enough awards action. The really low moments were when they simply quickly announced winners before the show continued. Rushed-in and utterly disrespectful to both winners and nominees and why did they do it? Because they could have more people perform. Makes absolutely no sense. What a mess this entire show was. It is sad what MTV has become, not just recently, but the demise started already over a decade ago, probably earlier and it still gets worse and worse, even if it is hardly possible anymore. That's how low it is already. If you look at the people in charge of this show in key positions behind the camera and as writers, namely Clare, Morgan and Maguire, you will find names that have solid experience really for many years with similar events, so you could think that their involvement here might lead to decent quality, but the truth is apparently that all they did in the past was extremely poor already and they just keep doing the same and sell it as an artistic achievement to the masses.

There is also Paul Dugdale included here as director because of his involvement with the Gorillaz segment apparently and boy watching this made me a bit sad. I remember I liked the Gorillaz and their music during the early stages of their career. But man have they gotten generic and forgettable. Almost impossible to watch. Then again, this means they fit in nicely here with the rest of the gang where for example Lewis Capaldi was one of the big names. I always knew he was incredibly overrated and most of his fame only came because he does not look like a perfect star, but apparently this is already enough now if we look at how almost all his songs sound pretty much the same. More performance mediocrity and "mediocrity" is already a gentle way to put it there. It was these utterly forgettable performances that by the way also got in the way of a decent and respectful in-memoriam segment. Yep. How did they deal with this? They included a message for ten seconds after the show's closing credits. This is an absolute travesty really. Absolutely no respect for the deceased artists at all. What was way more important was of course to also make political statements and get in a political agenda because it is the thing to do nowadays. I still despise it. This should be about the awards and to a small extent about the music and that is enough. Instead, there are two lengthy inclusions linked to the war in Ukraine of course. The first was already bad enough, but the second one towards the end then when they had singers from all kinds of European countries (singers that also did not get a proper introduction of course) deliver a song that was apparently some kind of Ukrainian folk music was really, really unwatchable. I applaud every artist that refused to be part of this charade. Not sure if any did. It could be a career deal breaker. I mean I never turn off shows, films whatever and I don't think it's the right thing to do in general, but there I would not have blamed anybody who would have decided for themselves that they are not gonna take it anymore.

What else can I add? I think I made myself pretty clear overall. Oh yeah, David Guetta was also featured on a few occasions here. Gee, he really looks like Tim Roth these days. Music-wise I also found him so uninspired with the song he and a female singer performed and also I think they won an award for this number, but yeah it shows that if this is the best from the pile, then the general level has to be really low. OneRepublic performed too and that was it in terms of really huge stars. The other ones were not so famous, but maybe that was just how I saw it because I did not know their names. They must have had some success to get into the lineup here. I found their music really forgettable though. I think most will agree when I say that nobody will talk about it anymore two or three years from now. Maybe one year. That sounds like a good thing, but actually I am afraid that this talk will just be about other then more recent equally forgettable acts. All in all, this show was just a bad joke as a whole. I mean come on: What is it with categories like "Best Metaverse Performance", "Best Push", "Biggest Fans". The entire ceremony was a catastrophe. Stay far, far away and I have little hope that this ceremony will be worth watching again in the next five years. Probably not even ten, that's how bad it is right now. I mean I am not even familiar with the German acts here, okay I know the name of one nominee, but that is it. The best decision would simply be to discontinue this event. Of course, it is not going to happen. Maybe it was an okay show for the people who there partying and dancing in the arena in Dusseldorf, but watching it on screen, one simply has to give the lowest rating possible for this mayhem. Absolutely not recommended.